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  Suddenly, a loud thud sounded from behind, and the companions spun about to see a gorilla clawing at the window. Furiously, the mutie beat on the Plexiglas window with three fists, but the bulletproof material wasn’t affected in the least by the savage pummeling. Baring its fangs, the creature pulled back and threw itself at the norms only yards away. The window bent a little, then popped from the frame, throwing the beast to the floor.

  Swiveling his bulky weapon, Ryan gave the gorilla a short burst from the M-1 A, the burning spray engulfing the creature completely. Its fur ablaze, the ape shrieked insanely and charged the companions, clawed hands of fire reaching for the hated tormentors.

  Retreating a step, Ryan doused the gorilla again, filling its screaming mouth with the burning spray. Temporarily beyond pain, the gorilla bellowed a roar and beat its chest, a living nightmare still struggling forward through the fiery flow.

  Working the bolt on his longblaster, Dean pumped a couple of rounds from the Weatherby into the creature, geysers of blood exploding from its back. Out of grens, Jak stitched it with a wreath of tumblers from the chattering M-16, the slugs peppering its hide. The beast staggered backward and tumbled out the broken window. A flaming meteor, the howling animal plummeted to the hard street five stories below and hit with a resounding wet smack.

  Tiny patches of flame dotted the hallway carpeting from the spray of the flamethrower, and the companions moved away from the destroyed corridor, a stiff breeze outside the gaping window sucking out the putrid fumes rising from the melting carpet.

  “How find us here?” Jak demanded, removing the half-spent clip and slapping in a full mag. Spent brass littered the carpet, flecks of gold lost amid the complex art deco pattern of the delicate weave.

  “No way it could,” Ryan said, waving the wand to disperse some of the unburned fumes from the injector. “It must have been here for the same reasons as the droids, standing guard.”

  “Apes outside the city, droids in the streets, a cafeteria that could feed a hundred soldiers.” Mildred glanced around the hallways. “What in hell were scientists doing here that required that much protection?”

  Dean started to answer, when Doc interrupted.

  “Excuse me, but where are J.B. and Krysty?” the old man demanded, glancing about.

  Shocked, the companions quickly looked around, but the two were nowhere in sight, the long hallway behind them clear all the way to the elevator bank and dark stairwell.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Snarling in rage, Krysty triggered another burst from her M-16 into the Plexiglas wall, the slugs slapping into the soft material and staying there.

  The moment J.B. broke open a locked drawer in the desk, the transparent barrier silently descended from the ceiling to seal them off in a heartbeat. They shouted for the others, and fired rounds into the walls and ceiling, but the companions walked away, obviously not hearing a thing.

  “Same as the windows downstairs,” she cursed, working the bolt to clear a jam. “Must be some kind of a burglar trap.”

  “Millie says folks were allowed to chill thieves in the predark world,” J.B. muttered from under the desk. “Stupidest thing I ever heard of…ah! Found it! There’s a hidden button down here.”

  “Mebbe it opens this,” Krysty said, tapping the barrier with the rapidfire. “Press it, quick.”

  “Have already,” the man replied. “Anything happen?”

  “Nothing.”

  An annoyed grunt. “Shit! I’ll try different combinations. One long, one short, two in a row. Let me know as soon as it moves.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Suddenly, Ryan and the rest of the companions ran into view. Stopping before the sealed-off alcove, they stared at the Plexiglas shield. Ryan asked a question, but Krysty touched her ears and shook her head. Understanding that vocal communication was impossible, the one-eyed man frowned and stepped closer, looking at the slugs embedded in the plastic material. Reaching in a pocket, he withdrew a gren and gestured her to move away.

  “The others are back,” Krysty said, moving behind the desk. “Ryan is going to try a gren.”

  “Good,” J.B. replied, getting out from underneath the desk. “I wanted to use the Claymore, but trapped in here the concussion would have pulped us both flat.”

  In the hallway, the companions started making a pile of furniture to help contain the blast of the gren, when Krysty noticed one of the elevators down the hallway open its doors. Standing inside the lift was a droid, its belly needler swiveling in search of prey. Nobody in the hall seemed to notice the arrival of the elevator and continued working to free their trapped friends.

  “Ryan, droid!” Krysty screamed, firing her M-16 in the direction of the approaching machine as a warning.

  The impact of the 7.62 mm rounds into the barrier had to have made some small noise because Ryan looked up in time to see the droid crawling from the elevator. Without hesitation, the man triggered the flamethrower, the burning lance washing over the machine in a hellstorm of liquid destruction. Blinded by the flames, the droid cut loose with its needler, the slivers tearing apart the pile of furniture as wood chips and stuffing exploded into the air like confetti.

  Dropping to a knee, Dean assumed a firing stance and triggered the Weatherby, a foot-long tongue of flame erupting from the longblaster. The droid jerked from the brutal impact of the heavy slug into its armored hull, the needler going wild, hosing the deadly slivers into the ceiling, chewing the tiles into dust.

  Webley and LeMat booming, Doc hammered the machine with miniballs and bullets from his twin .44 handcannons. Then, past the flaming droid, the other elevators opened and two more droids strode out. Any view of the companions blocked by the flames and furniture, the machines turned their lasers on J.B. and Krysty. The Plexiglas wall became spotted with brown patches from the hits, and soon they couldn’t see what was happening on the other side. But as Ryan sent out another spray, the reinforcement droids swiveled about and marched over the burning wreckage of their fallen brother, lasers stabbing through the swirling smoke.

  “Bastard button summoned the sec droids,” J.B. spit, forcing his hands away from the Uzi. His friends were fighting for their lives only a foot away, and there was nothing he could do to help them with the barrier solidly in place.

  “There has to be another way out!” Krysty shouted, looking at the walls and ceiling. She sent a burst from the M-16 into the ceiling, blowing away the tiles to expose a sheet of prestressed concrete. The alcove was as solid as a bunker.

  “Got an idea,” J.B. said, grabbing hold of the desk. Groaning with the effort, he flipped over the massive piece of furniture and it crashed to the carpet, throwing business cards, phone and computer helterskelter—but also exposing a column of bundled wire extending from inside a hollow leg and going into the floor.

  Quickly, the Armorer slashed the wires and scraped the ends clean to start twisting all of the bare copper together. A minute passed in tense silence while the man worked feverishly, the soundless battle in the hallway only visible as flashes of light in the dense smoke and fumes.

  A bright spark snapped as J.B. twisted in the last wire, and a large section of the alcove wall behind them broke apart to expose a shiny steel door. The wheel lock turned by itself, and with a hiss of hydraulics, the armored portal swung aside to reveal another room deeper in the office building. Without pause, Krysty charged through the doorway, desperately trying to find another way to reach her friends.

  Stainless-steel walls and floor announced the next room as a surgical laboratory of some kind, the ceiling a complex array of pipes, cables and wiring. A glowing panel of white plastic illuminated several X-ray negatives clipped to the frame showing the details of human anatomy. Several locked cabinets stood alongside a line of operating tables, a curved bank of comp controls facing the tables from the far end of the lab.

  Spotting a second door, Krysty headed that way but slowed for a tic as she realized the X-ray negatives were of pregnant women
, their unborn babies resembling tiny brains equipped with ropy tentacles. The woman barely had time to react to the sights when flashing lights danced across the control boards. Suddenly, her M-16/M-203 was seized by a mechanical arm from the ceiling, the robotic claw yanking away the weapon with enough force to break fingers if she hadn’t released the rapidfire.

  “Warning,” a soft voice chimed from a hidden speaker. “Security breach, level one. Weapons in the surgery. Repeat, weapons in the surgery. Automatic recovery of test subjects in progress.”

  Instantly, the ceiling became alive with mechanical arms, clacking and snipping, a rain of rust heralding the limbs as they extended for the startled woman.

  Standing in the open doorway, J.B. randomly sprayed the entire ceiling with his Uzi, the 9 mm rounds ricocheting off the servomotors and guide rails to ricochet down onto the operating table and the control consoles. Burning sparks flew everywhere, the overhead lights flickered and the robotic arms began to wildly thrash about, smashing open the cabinets and spilling out scalpels, forceps and other healing instruments indistinguishable from primitive implements of torture.

  Drawing her S&W .38 revolver, Krysty fought a rush of panic as she dodged an arm tipped with rapidly spinning blades. In cold precision, a robotic limb clamped around her upper arm and lifted the woman off the floor. At point-blank range, Krysty fired her .38 into the assembly of gears, to no effect. The pre-dark surgical droid was made of the finest alloys, much tougher than the soft lead slugs of her revolver.

  The limb began rolling along the ceiling, and Krysty wildly fought to break free. With her feet off the ground, she couldn’t even summon her special strength because she would still be helpless in the iron grip of the computerized machine.

  “Patient reacquired,” a speaker crackled. “Prepare bed six.”

  At the end of the line, an operating table’s curved restraints snapped open, and water began trickling along the blood trough to flush away the excess flesh.

  The lab was going to harvest her! Now icy panic hit Krysty, and she fired the last two rounds trying to disable the table. The slugs zinged off the bare steel, leaving gray streaks from the lead but nothing more.

  Frantically shooting his way across the lab, J.B. tried to reach the redhead, but the gyrating arms made that impossible. A clamp lurched for his throat and the man ducked, the pincers crushing his fedora instead.

  “Subject two is male,” the speaker announced. “No ID. Terminate at once.”

  Trying to reload the Uzi, the Armorer was forced to dive for cover under an operating table as metal rods tipped with spinning drills and spinning bone saws thrust from converging directions. His disappearance seemed to confuse the equipment for a moment. Slapping a fresh clip into the Uzi, J.B. then swung around the M-4000 and blasted the ceiling with steel fléchettes. Hydraulic fluid began spurting from a cut hose somewhere, and two of the arms dropped to the floor.

  Charging through the gap in the rods and snaking cables, the Armorer reached the control console and emptied the scattergun into the keyboard and dials. Half the board went dark, but the ceiling-mounted machinery still continued to function. Dark night, the bastard things had to have reserve capacitors! Those would weaken and fail eventually. But not soon enough. Krysty was already suspended over the operating table, kicking and jerking to avoid the clamps.

  Putting another long burst into the active section of the control board, the man reached inside and began pulling out handfuls of wiring. But a reflection in a dark monitor made him drop low as a metal claw slammed into the console exactly where he had just been. J.B. felt the passage of the metal through his hair and, staying on the floor, he began firing the Uzi at anything coming his way.

  Grabbing an animated cable trying to encircle her waist, Krysty hauled herself higher into the ceiling and managed to rest an arm on the guide rails. This eased the pain of the tugging clamp attached to her other arm and gave her enough time to fumble in her pocket for a gren. J.B. was far enough away to make the explosive charge safe to use. Unfortunately, a telescoping rod slammed into her hand and the gren fell to the floor, rolling out of sight beneath the tables.

  Swearing, Krysty desperately pulled out her knife and rammed the blade deep into the spinning gears of the clamp holding her prisoner. Instantaneously, the robotic limb stopped moving, the resulting jerk throwing her free. Krysty landed sprawling between two of the steel tables and dived for cover beneath another table closer to the open doorway. As fingering ceramic rods and ferruled cables quested for her location, the woman pulled out a fistful of rounds, dropping most of them as she quickly reloaded the revolver. Her dropped gren was nowhere in sight, so Krysty darted from table to table, firing at anything that moved. She had to reach J.B. Covering each other’s back, they could make a stand and shoot their way out of there. Fighting alone, each of them stood little chance of survival.

  Something moved on her right, and Krysty stopped herself from firing at J.B. at the very last second. He shoved the loaded shotgun at her, and in unison they blasted the hellish nest of flexing machinery nonstop.

  Something exploded outside the lab, and the cables slowed their relentless attack. Seizing the moment, J.B. slapped the damaged Claymore mine on the console and stabbed in a timing pencil where the timer used to be. As he reached to snap off the pencil, all the robotic arms festooning the ceiling reached for the couple, slapping aside weapons and pinning them helpless. Barely able to breathe in the crushing iron bonds, J.B. and Krysty struggled madly but were still dragged toward the waiting tables.

  Somewhere the speaker crackled with static. “Unauthorized personnel secured,” the monotone voice reported to its dead masters as a spinning circular saw came straight for Krysty to harvest the unborn mutie. “Commence primary procedure.”

  A deafening staccato filled the lab as numerous rapidfires peppered the ceiling with hot lead. Then Ryan hosed the control board with chem flames, filling the air with the reek of condensed fuel and propane. As the liquid fire seeped into the controls, sparks flew from the switches and dials, monitors shattered and the Claymore detonated.

  Louder than a shotgun blast, the directional explosion blew a tremendous hole in the console, and the rest of the board went dark. Abruptly slowing their motions, the rods and cables soon ceased to move, the serrated edge of the rusty saw indenting the shirt over the woman’s taut stomach.

  Rushing to her, Ryan grabbed the machine limb in his fist and ripped it from the ceiling, then cast away the filthy surgical tool.

  “You okay?” he demanded anxiously, looking for any wounds.

  “Just bruised,” Krysty replied, picking up her revolver from the floor. Pieces of wiring and IC chips were scattered everywhere, hydraulic fluid dripping from above to form red puddles on the steel floor, then trickle into drains.

  “That explosion was you folks trying to get in,” J.B. said, unraveling a length of cable from around his waist.

  “Blew a hole in the floor above,” Mildred said, passing him the dropped Uzi. “But getting to the next level took longer than expected.”

  Expertly, the Armorer checked the rapidfire for damage before draping it over a shoulder. “More droids?”

  “Not anymore,” Doc boasted, grinning with his oddly perfect teeth. “We came, we saw, we conquered.”

  “Thank you, Jealous Caesar,” Mildred snorted.

  Stooping under a table, Dean retrieved the M-16/ M-203 and took it to Krysty. “Here you go,” the boy said. “But I don’t think it’s going to work anymore. That barrel is pinched shut.”

  “So I see,” the redhead muttered, and removed the half-spent clip from the rapidfire before laying the weapon aside. The M-203 was intact, but without grens the launcher was just deadweight.

  “Take ammo,” Jak suggested, holding out a hand.

  Krysty tossed him the mag, and the teenager tucked it into a jacket pocket. Scavenging through the debris, the companions spent a few minutes recovering the rest of the fallen weapons and sorti
ng out the ammo.

  “What is this place, anyway?” Dean asked, walking around the destroyed laboratory, the Weatherby cradled in his left arm, his right hand resting on the checkered grip of his Browning.

  “Nursery,” J.B. muttered, straightening the brim of his crushed hat before returning it to the accustomed position. “Check those X rays. The babies look just like the mutants inside a Firebird. I saw one when the bus crashed and a rocket broke apart.”

  Crossing the room, Mildred removed one of the film negatives from the darkened panel and held it to the flickering ceiling light. “Merciful God,” the physician whispered, her expression turning ugly. “If this was inside a normal female, then these aren’t muties, but genetically altered human children.”

  “Breed on purpose?” Jak demanded, resting a boot on a broken section of the control board.

  “So it would seem.”

  “Why?”

  “Most likely to replace comps,” Ryan said, frowning. “The EMP blast of a nuke fries electronics unless they are heavily shielded. Shielding no missile can carry and fly. But these whatever you call them would still be able to guide a missile to the enemy.”

  “Pervs,” Jak declared, as if that settled the matter.

  “Yeah, even stickies protect their own young,” Dean added. “The whitecoats here must have been triple fruit-brained.”

  “Merely ruthless and greedy for a fat government contract,” Doc rumbled hatefully. “I have dealt with the ilk of such dastardly men before in a similar abattoir.”

  Walking across the lab, Ryan stood before the second door. “Anybody check this?” he asked, gesturing at the bare steel portal with the flamethrower.

  “Never had the chance,” J.B. said, ambling closer. “We got jumped the minute we entered the lab.”

  Taking a stance, Ryan aimed the flamethrower. “Do it now,” he directed.

  Getting out his tools, J.B. got busy, but the metal door wasn’t locked and was free of traps. Proceeding inward, they found the next room was a small office with tall windows overlooking the downtown shopping center and theater district. On a bentwood hat rack hung a white lab coat, with the artistic symbol of the Protoculte Corporation on the right breast pocket. A sofa stood near a compact bar, the array of bottles thick with dust on the shelves in the corner. Some sort of a multicolor chart covered the remaining wall situated alongside a Spartan desk of three chrome legs supporting a thick sheet of tinted glass. There were no drawers or files for documents, just a slim briefcase-size comp with a beige mouse on a plain pad. The power cord and phone line were wrapped in a silvery tube that went across the glass and down a chrome leg to reach an outlet. A black leather chair stood behind the desk; some bronze coins lay on the dark cloth seat.